Coalition’s tricky questions on Lord Browne’s university funding review
Just how big is the gulf between what Lord John Browne’s review on university funding is leaning towards and what the coalition wants? And how serious would a difference of opinion be?
Second one first, as it’s a bit easier to answer. The Browne review is published on 11 October. The government has to have its agreed way forward on higher education funding ready for the spending review on 20 October.
Now, the government is not honour bound to accept the Browne review, but it would not particularly want to look like it was riding roughshod over their work and, realistically, time would be extremely tight to think up a completely fresh approach.
Vince Cable’s team insists it doesn’t know what is in the draft Browne report but other parts of Whitehall know very well what the Browne review is considering because the review team passes on its thoughts to be run through Treasury modelling predictors to work out costs.
Can Browne come up with something that is agreeable to both parts of the coalition? The final page of the coalition agreement says “if the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote.” But they so don’t want to go there.
With their big campus seat votes, they want something they can back not something they try to long finger and get fingered for anyway.
That was what Vince Cable was searching for when he raised the prospect of a graduate tax before the summer break. He used the phrase ”graduate contribution” (which covers a multitude of options) but “graduate tax” was one option he was floating. It would sound more progressive to Lib Dems, might just soften the pill that they were effectively reneging on their romantic attachment to universally free higher education.
Well-paid graduates could end up paying many times over the cost of their degree. But the Browne Review doesn’t like the sound of that.
It is leaning towards higher and truly variable fees that take into account likely future earnings from different degree courses, starting in the autumn term of 2013.
Graduates would be paying more than they pay now, some a lot more. But they’d be paying the agreed selling price of the degree course, not paying for their degree course many times over. Much more “contribution” than “tax.”
That risks sounding and looking a lot like a continuation of the tuition fees path that Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis set HE on years ago, and which the Lib Dems have set their faces against in policy statements and speeches galore.
It might be possible to dress it up as a change of approach, but would it be enough of a change?
A source close to the Browne Review insists they are “very alive to the politics” of all this and that “The Times” presentation of the story today is too stark an “either/or” take on the options.
They feel they can still come up with something that Vince Cable can sell to his people. They have four weeks to work it out.
There are 4 comments on this post
A graduate tax is fairer. anyone paying many times more than the cost of their course will only be doing so because they are earning that much more.
In contrast, higher tuition fees would be very unfair on someone who goes through a high-value course but ends up with a comparatively low-paid job.
One other point on the graduate tax – it should be retrospective so all those high-minded politicians who enjoyed a free university education contribute a fair share too.
EU students are the problem. Whether those students come to any of the British Universities for their whole or part of a degree, fees are the problem.
Why so? Because we agreed by Treaty that ALL students attending any of the EU Universities (including our own) shall pay the same fees as their own nationals. So, when a British citizen is accepted onto a course at The Sorbonne, she’ll pay the same fee as a French student, and vice versa.
Therefore, it would not be sensible for any British University to charge much less than other EU universities. Or especially nothing at all. [Scotland, by the way, only charges fees for students from England - because England is not a separate EU State].
That means there’s got to be some fee charged – either through a graduate tax or a repayable loan – or British Universities would be swamped with well-qualified EU applicants. That’s the strong reason for the current system or any replacement.
‘St. Vince Cable’ is discovering that a ‘Graduate Tax’ is as impractical as ‘local income taxes’. But, like local income tax, Liberals didn’t need to have practical policies because they never thought they’d do more than talk about…
I think we need to challenge this idea that the only person who benefits from a university education is the graduate.
When we are invited to recognise the success of some millionaire who built his empire without a degree, he should also accept that his accountants, lawyers and other employees are effective because of the education they undertook, and his success depends on that.
So perhaps he should be prepared to pay an appropriate rate of tax (eg the same proportion of his income as his average employee), and this can help fund the education of future lawyers, accountants and so on.
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